Canning Revisited

I am continuing to be amazed at the prices of items in the stores these days and if you are paying attention to the news and financial indicators, you know as well as I do that things are not going to get better any time soon. 

I talked today to a couple of service members families and they are experiencing layoffs in their companies and fearing the worst, not to mention wondering what they will do if it happens to them.  One of the moms I talked to made the statement "De, we need to go back to the old way of doing things."  I couldn't agree more.

I had planned to post the other day about my steal of a deal on a pressure cooker.  I had been wanting to get one because certain things such as vegetables you just can't can safely in a "hot water bath".  The temperature needs to reach a certain level to kill all of those little bacteria guys we all  want to avoid.  You can't reach those temperatures without a pressure cooker.

I figured the cheapest place I would be able to find one would be at Wal-Mart but lo and behold they didn't have a single one to be found.  I knew I had a $50.00 gift certificate for Macy's left over from Christmas so I decided since I had to go to Florence, KY anyway, I would stop in and see what I could find.

Macy's had two pressure cookers.  The first one cost only $29.99 but was a brand I had never heard of.  The second was a Fagor and cost $149.99.  Now before you have heart failure you need to realize that to get a good pressure cooker, you are going to pay a nice penny for it, but it is well worth the cost in the long run.  Not only can you use it for canning purposes, but you can also cook meals in it for much less the time than you normally would which saves money, especially if you have gas appliances like I do.  Putting a roast or chicken in the a gas oven for a couple of hours versus on the stove in the pressure cooker for 20-30 minutes on the stove is a big difference.  And as the food cooks under pressure, it comes out very tender and juicy.

Now, I want to be very clear that I didn't pay $149.99 for the pressure cooker but I did walk out of the store with a brand new Fagor.  As it turned out, there were only two left and they marked them down to $69.99.  When I was checking out the very nice "Register Man" asked me if I had a Macy's charge card.  As a matter of fact I do own a Macy's card, but honestly hadn't used it in years and didn't have it with me.  He told me that was not a problem and that he could look it up with my social security number.  Soo, I punched that in and he said it had been deactivated because of non-use but if I reactivated it, then I would get an additional $30.00 off the pressure cooker.  I didn't hesitate.  Just because I had it activated doesn't mean I am going to run out and use it.  I hadn't used it in years and normally stay away from the Mall so i wasn't worried.  So, we reactivated the card and now I was down to roughly $40 + tax.  Don't forget I had the $50 gift card in my wallet which I politely handed over thinking this was an awesome day!!!  So, I walked out of there with my $149.99 Fagor Pressure Cooker at absolutely no cost to me and I still have $3 and change on my gift card.

Have I used it yet......you betcha.  Tonight I canned a couple of bags of carrots but that's a different post.

 

This post is part of the Becentsable Gathering Compensated Affiliate